The Next Big Idea

We don’t know when the pandemic will end, but we do know this: while we’ve been stuck at home, the world has been spinning faster than ever. Name any existing trend in technology, healthcare, commerce...

25 Feb 20211h 8min

The Next Big Idea returns on February 25th.

19 Feb 20212min

Neuroscientist, philosopher, podcaster, author, meditation guru, and unabashed atheist Sam Harris is one of our best-known — and most controversial — public intellectuals. In this bonus episode, he an...

25 Sep 20201h 5min

You have to play with the hand you’re dealt. At least that’s what we’re always told. But is it really true? How much of what we achieve in life is the product of our pluck and guile, and how much is j...

1 Sep 202049min

You may have heard about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, which sees human development as a sort of a pyramid, with survival needs at the bottom, social and emotional needs in the middle, and “self-actual...

25 Aug 202052min

Our society is built on the assumption that we’re all a broken stoplight away from reverting to our animal selves. It’s what we’ve come to call “realism.” Historian Rutger Bregman thinks that kind of ...

18 Aug 202047min

Birds do it, bees do it, even fishes in the seas do it. So why do we have such a hard time when people migrate from one place to another? Science writer Sonia Shah presents the evidence that migration...

11 Aug 202047min

We do it 25,000 times a day, but most of us rarely give breathing a thought. Author James Nestor says we’re missing out on one of the most powerful pathways to health and happiness. He leads Rufus thr...

4 Aug 202047min